Text by Andreas Hansen. All photos by Kate Stanworth, By the end of our interview at the Ambassador Hotel in Hargeisa, the young waiter brings us the bill and discretely asks Jama: “Is the book fair happening this year?” As Jama confirms this, the waiter asks again: “I’ve written something. Can I submit it?” Jama […]

Leikun Nahusenay is a young and talented art photographer from Ethiopia. He holds a Master of Fine Art from Addis Ababa Fine Art School, and works as a studio artist and photographer in Nas Gedame studio in Addis. He is a member of the Netsa Art Village, one of Addis’ most important art spaces and one of the […]

Miriam Syowia Kyambi is a visual artist living and working in Kenya. Her most recent project is Between Us – an experimental multi media production incorporating performance, installation, photography and video that is ongoing at the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi and will culminate in a final live art piece on Saturday 5th July 2014 at GoDown. Between Us […]

The Ethiopian girl band Yegna has several times been compared to the British 90’s girl pop group Spice Girls. This is a rather unflattering and simplistic comparison that does not tell you much about the many aspects of Yegna. Although both Yegna and Spice Girls were manufactured groups with 5 distinctive female members, this is pretty […]

A conversation with Sagal Jibril about loving Somalia While the world has been turning the blind eye to the hot and remote desert-lands of Somalia for years, the recent end of a 20-year long conflict has aroused hope and optimism. Relatively speaking Somalis are experiencing the most peaceful period in decades, which has […]

In August last year, the Somali-British singer, composer and producer Aar Maanta travelled to his hometown Jijiga, the capital of Somali Region in South Eastern Ethiopia. Aar Maanta visited Jijiga to experience and document the revival of Somali music – which we have previously highlighted here – and particularly the re-emergence of the classic Somali […]

How Africa’s most original fusion project is fostering cross-cultural curiosity along the Nile through music During an Egyptian cabinet meeting on June 3, 2013, several cabinet members – apparently unaware that the meeting was being broadcast live on TV – advised the now former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi that the Ethiopian Renaissance […]

The golden years of Ethiopian jazz have throughout the last decade been well documented on recordings and in writings but less so on film. That is until now. As we have previously covered, film maker Aramazt Kalayjian is currently producing a documentary film ‘Tezeta‘ exploring the collective reminiscence of Ethiopian Armenians and the Armenian influence on […]

By Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein Long Live the Girls! It was a chant heard on the streets of Addis one rainy Wednesday afternoon in early August. Who were these girls breaking into spontaneous manifesto? These were young women writers with a message, arresting traffic in the bustling Arat Kilo neighborhood to provoke new thinking and […]

“Ethiopia was so wonderful music-wise. Everywhere I went, I heard music and it was almost always some kind of regional delicacy. I hardly heard any music from outside Ethiopia, which was surprising,” Awesome Tapes from Africa’s Brian Shimkovitz recounts. Brian’s tape digging adventures has previously taken him around West Africa but his travels […]